Part Four: Hell and High Finance

It was the beginning of the 1980's, a decade that would be
very big for role-playing: a time of incredible growth and
expansion, when RPGs would take a world stage. A golden age.
But with this new-found power would also come tragedy, hardship
and abuse. While gaming was reaching some of its greatest
heights, other forces were putting it through some of its
toughest challenges. This combination meant that the hobby
did not just grow in the eighties, it matured, changing into
a whole new generation, as did its participants.

Tragic Beginnings

It all began in August of 1979 at Michigan State University. A student called James Dallas Egbert III (called Dallas Egbert) ran away from the college, with the intention of killing himself. He left a confused note that mentioned the steam tunnells under the university, and the game Dungeons and Dragons, of which James was an avid and obsessive player. James, however,
did not kill himself at this time, and was later tracked down by a private detective.

During the investigation of this case, however there occurred a tragic mistake. Through irresponsible journalism, and a confusion by the authorities, it was publicised that D&D was responsible for Dallas' disappearance. When Dallas killed himself the next year, this gave birth to the first "D&D suicide". This was despite the facts that Egbert
was facing extreme pressure as a child prodigy (he was 16),
was an alleged drug addict, and was highly mentally unstable.

Steam tunnels are common throughout the US, and are
very much part of the college experience, as are the jokes,
allusions and myths that are based on them.

With reports that the steam tunnels - which for years were the
basis of countless urban myths, including that they housed a
serial rapist - were the site of "live" D&D games, the story
rapidly grew out of hand. At the time, role-playing was
very much a marginal leisure activity; its recent growth had
brought the existence of the hobby to the attention of many,
but any knowledge of the game was still very rare. Thus D&D
was the perfect straw dog for the media, easily presented
as a dangerous, cult-like obsession that was a "threat to
your children". Various heavyweights of the industry were
interviewed about the game, and they were quick to dispell
the claims. As a result, the story died down fairly quickly,
but the myth had been born.

In June 1982, another tragic suicide occurred, which would
have even more damaging effects on the hobby. Irving "Bink"
Pulling, suffering from chronic depression, isolation and mental
instability, took his own life with the loaded pistol his
mother kept in the house. Again, though the problems of the
victim were obvious - with both friends and family reporting
anti-social, irrational and highly delusional behaviour -
the blame for his death was placed on D&D. In particular,
this scapegoating came from his mother, Patricia, or Pat.

The classic example of the kind of ignorant
propaganda which was produced at this time is
Dark
Dungeons, by fundamentalist cartooner Jack Chick.

A Time of Darkness

Pat Pulling first accused a teacher at Irving's school of
killing her son, by placing a "curse" on him during the course
of playing the game. No other participants in the game recalled
this event ever happening, but this did not stop Pulling from
taking her case to court. The case was quickly thrown out.
After this, Pulling formed the society Bothered About Dungeons
and Dragons (BADD). With this society, she began a war of
propoganda against role-playing games, which included mass
distribution of flyers and pamphlets, appearances on radio
and TV programs (including the infamous talk-show "Geraldo")
and live protests.

In 1984, Pulling involved BADD in the trial of Darren Molitor.
Darren was being tried for the murder of a young girl which
allegedly occurred while he was acting out a Halloween joke.
Pulling convinced the defence to argue on Molitor's lack of
culpability due to the influence of D&D, presenting many
so-called "D&D-experts" as witnesses. This evidence was
dismissed as irrelevant, but this did not deter BADD from
intervening in other trials.

What was most frightening about this incident was that BADD
was also able to convince Molitor of the game's control over
his actions. Under this belief, Molitor penned a damning essay
blaming D&D for his crime, which was then widely disseminated
by BADD. Later, Molitor stated that he was under a lot of
stress and "completely in confusion" when he wrote the essay,
and hence "may have gone overboard". He added "I no longer
feel the game is dangerous for everyone". This brainwashing of
a person under great stress for their own propaganda purposes
demonstrates the dangerous extent of BADD's tactics.

BADD also campaigned to the Consumer Product and Safety
Commision to have warning labels placed on RPGs, a case that was
also rejected. Meanwhile, Pulling continually tried to make
herself more credible, by acquiring a private investigation
licence and attracting the support of psychologist Dr Thomas
Radecki. Pulling also wrote a book on the subject, entitled
"The Devil's Web", and Rona Jaffe penned "Mazes and Monsters",
a fictional work about a teenager being lured into the occult
through role-playing. These publications and credentials added
much to the apparent plausability of their claims. However,
the gaming community was beginning to strike back.

Mazes and Monsters was made into a movie. It was
released in 1983 and starred Tom Hanks.

BADD's propoganda had raised the interest of many.
After BADD petitioned the Safety Commision, the
Game Manufacturing Association
(GAMA) carried out their own studies, as did many
independent researchers. In 1987, Armando Simo'n published
the first paper on the psychological status of role-players,
and many more followed. Every case of D&D-inspired crime or
suicide that BADD listed were thoroughly investigated and no
culpability of the game was found.

GAMA also commissioned Michael Stackpole to investigate
BADD and Pulling. In 1990, he released his now-famous
Pulling Report, which exposed the spurious and
manipulative methods used by BADD. This led to the
discrediting of BADD, and the group dissappeared.
The
Comittee for the Advancement of RPGs (CAR-PGa) was formed
to work against the defamation of the hobby.

It is often difficult for gamers of today to realise the extent
of the threat BADD presented to RPGs. Despite its lack of
legitimate authority, BADD captured the attention of many,
and, at the peak of its power, had a significant level of
influence across the US . Many schools banned the games,
churches condemned them and shops stopped carrying them.
Gaming stores were often forced to close and more than one
small company went bankrupt. Worst of all, BADDs propoganda
was able to convince thousands - possibly even millions - that
role-playing was dangerous and evil. This was so effective that
even now, over ten years later, people continue to associate
the game with suicide and the occult.

Many of us have suffered some sort
of prejudice from the community. Why not
tell us about your
experiences, and how you handled them.

This prejudice continues to surround us: role-playing is
still occasionally slighted by the media and religious groups,
and anti-gaming crusades still occur. Two years ago, another
large movement began in Italy, after a so-called "role-playing
suicide". However, the situation is much better today and it
is irresponsible to think or act as if the battle-lines are
still drawn.

The Golden Age Continues

This baptism of fire formed a very important part in our
hobby's history. The gaming community learnt much about
itself, and became more close knit as loyalties were tested.
This produced a maturing effect, especially on the old-time
gamers who had fought the hardest. The result was something
of a generation gap between gamers who began playing before
the mid-eighties, and those that joined after.

But this was not to be divisive, and the gaming community
was ultimately strengthened and educated by the ordeal.
Likewise, BADD's propoganda lifted the profile of the game to
new heights around the world, and when the fuss died down,
the name was still known. Indeed, this rise in fame helped
the golden age really take off, while the new-found maturity
stopped the subsequent explosion in popularity from going to
the industry's collective head. The experience hardened the
industry, gave it the guts to go from basement enterprises to
world-wide corporate giants; from adversity came the strength
and wisdom to truly make gaming great.

The Unstoppable TSR

The backbone of the golden age was to come from commercial
presence, and none made the transformation into merchandising
machine better than TSR. Their popularity continued to
skyrocket with the release of the Advanced system for D&D.
Books and supplements were released faster than ever before.

Unluckily, the very first AD&D supplement was the
controversially titled "Deities and Demigods"

As the pressure from outsiders grew stronger, things like
clubs and conventions became more and more popular. In 1981,
TSR invested the Role-Playing
Games Association (RPGA) to help unite gamers across the US.
Today, RPGA is a powerful force, connecting millions of gamers,
world wide.

With their help, it seemed sure that TSR would continue
to dominate the gaming industry, despite the huge number of
gaming titles and companies coming into being. Something else,
however, cemented their position at the top of the heap forever.
A little something called Dragonlance.

In the early eighties, the AD&D designers realised that many of
the new games had the edge over them in that they were based
in a world and ethos that already existed. The Star Trek RPG
(FASA, 1982) for example,
was incredibly successful
because of the attraction of the setting. To match this, they
decided to design their own world, and release both books and
supplements simultaneously. Staff writers Margaret Weis and
Tracy Hickman were given the job.

Before it became Dragonlance, this initiative was
known at TSR as "Project Overlord". Nasty.

The result was "The Dragonlance Chronicles", and it was
staggeringly popular. In fact, soon after its release in 1984,
it became the first fantasy series to feature on the New York Times' Best Seller
list, and has sold over three million copies world wide. It
has since inspired more books than almost any other fantasy
series, a plethora of modules, supplements, computer games and
recently, even its very own RPG - Dragonlance: The Fifth Age.
It also turned TSR into a major paperback publisher and made
Larry Elmore a household name.

TSR played this to the hilt, releasing one of the biggest
campaigns ever to match the storyline of the novels. There were
12 altogether, stretching from Dragons of Despair to Dragons
of Triumph, over three years later. This also proved to
be the most commercially successful campaign ever released.
Thus Dragonlance cemented Raistlin and Tanis firmly into gaming
ethos, and TSR firmly into mega-corporation status. At this
peak, TSR was noted among the big guns of the business world,
and big companies suddenly became interested in the new market.
AD&D soon became the basis of a woeful animated series, which
spawned its own line of merchandise, and there was talk of
a movie.

And still TSR went on. Some bright spark turned the Basic Game
into five separate games (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master,
Immortal) to make it both easier for new gamers to get into, and
much more profitable for TSR. Dragon Magazine became syndicated
worldwide, and it was soon joined by Dungeon Magazine. In 1987,
Ed Greenwood's world of the Forgotten Realms was released,
and it performed almost as strongly as Dragonlance, breaking
the latter's records for both number of subsequent novels and
game supplements. And in 1989, the second edition of the AD&D
rules were released and broke more records in RPG sales.

At the end of the seventies, AD&D had stood on almost equal
footing with its few competitors such as Tunnells and Trolls, and
RuneQuest. In less than a decade, AD&D had become
the richest, most popular and most powerful game in the world,
while the others had all effectively vanished. This was because
TSR always ran itself as a corporation, treating their games as
merchandisable product. TSR proved that gaming could involve
big money - even huge money - if it was done right. They set
the path to success that future games were quick to follow.

Though some cast aspersions on the effect this corporate
mindset had on the quality of the output, AD&D continued to
be immensely popular, so they must have been doing something
right. TSR also used their money and power to take gaming
to new levels of fame and fortune, and thus are responsible
for bringing RPGs to more people than all the other games put
together. Thus AD&D wrote itself into the history books for
the second time: as not just the first ever role-playing game,
but the biggest and best as well.

Without AD&D, role-playing would not be where it is today; the
two have existed in almost a symbiotic relationship since the
very beginning. If any game ever epitomised and encompassed
the hobby, this was it, and this was its greatest hour.

But the rest of the gaming industry was not slow to follow,
nor were they far behind. In the next installment, we'll
look at the companies which were to learn from TSR's examples,
combining to convert the hobby into the million-dollar industry
it is today. And we'll look at the opportunities for creativity
this corporate presence would provide. For on the crest of this
commercial tidal wave, the quality of design and expression
that RPGs offered would reach higher and higher levels, until
it became not just a game, but something approaching an artform.

Acknowledgements: Much of this information used
in this history came from the following websites. The
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
provide a good essay which clearly lays out the
facts about gaming and its detractors, and has a very
useful list of references. Those interested further
in the practices of BADD should read Michael Stackpole's
Pulling Report. This essay by Jeff Freeman is also a good summary. For some views from the other side, this site contains some articles against role-playing, and includes the Darren Molitor essay.